Newsletter 12
May 2002
"You do not have to be good…" the opening line of Mary Oliver's poem included in this issue. A good reminder as I put off writing this editorial, in fear of it not being good enough!We have an exciting schedule of retreats ahead, starting with Jeremy Logan from the Wellington area at Queen's Birthday. Jeremy has lead several of our retreats and his humour, relevant and practical teachings have provided a nurturing and insightful retreat for many. In September we are fortunate to offer a retreat with Stephen and Martine Bachelor, international teachers and authors of several highly regarded books. An interview with Stephen, and the titles of some of his books are included in this newsletter (see 'About the Teachers'). Sadly our Easter retreat was cancelled. Russell, the teacher, has recently become a dad, and the demands of 3 month old baby in the house is somewhat greater than anticipated (not a surprise to any parents out there I imagine!). Russell continues to give his monthly Wednesday night talks and will be taking meditation days and beginner courses soon (see front page schedule). The group was shocked and saddened to hear of Lois Hyde's death. Lois was killed in a car accident before Christmas. Lois had been on several retreats and regularly attended the Wednesday night sitting group. Our love and thoughts go to her family and other friends. Hope you enjoy the articles and poems.top
NEWS FROM THE STEERING GROUP
Steering group meeting was
largely "housekeeping" matters and initiating next years retreat
schedule.
More tapes have arrived for the library as well as a large number of free-distribution
book
LIBRARY
We have a library of taped dharma talks by a variety of teachers which members of the group are welcome to borrow. They are also available for purchase at $5 per tape (2 talks per tape). We also have a growing library of dharma books, BUT…
MISSING LIBRARY BOOKS:
- Embracing the beloved - Stephen Levine
- Verses from the Centre - Stephen Batchelor
If you have either of these books please return them to the library.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
RUSSELL WALKER ASSISTANCE FUND
If you would like to contribute dana to help support Russell, there is
an account in his name at the ASB:
12-3147-0112633-50
Russell is extremely grateful for all contributions that have been made to this fund. It has been an invaluable support for him and his family's livelihood.
Awakening to the Dharma
an interview with Stephen Batchelor
Q: You spent six years as a monk in India and Switzerland receiving and practising Tibetan Gelukpa teachings and then a further four years in Korea practising Zen. Why did you explore one tradition and then move to another?
A: I have found that each Asian tradition tends to have specialised in different strands of the Buddha's teaching and thus developed more strongly in some areas than others. The particular mix of needs that an individual today brings to Dharma practice will not necessarily be fulfilled by any one of these traditions. I discovered that despite the comprehensive range of doctrine, philosophy and psychology offered by the Tibetan Gelukpa tradition, the forms of tantric meditation towards which they were directed did not suit my disposition. I was looking for a direct form of meditative inquiry that would focus the growing sense of perplexity and doubt that I was feeling at that time. Korean Zen practice fitted that need admirably. I deal with this question at length in the second chapter of my book The Faith to Doubt.
Q: Did you go to India on a spiritual quest? Was there a moment when the quest stopped for you or does it still remain?
A: It is difficult accurately to reconstruct one's motives in retrospect. I doubt that I would have used the words "spiritual quest" to describe my going to India in the early '70s, but I suppose that was a part of it. I am no longer motivated by the kind of quest for instruction and training that characterised my first twelve years of practice. I can no longer generate the same kind of interest I used to have in a teacher, teaching or practice - even though intellectually I may be curious to know something about them. Nonetheless, I still feel deeply involved in a quest. But this is a quest for a language, a form in which adequately to articulate and communicate my experience. This does not mean that I have reached a final understanding and struggle to find words to express it. I see the quest for expression as an integral and creative part of the process of understanding itself.
Q: In 1985 you and Martine left monastic life in Korea and returned to the West to join Sharpham North Community. Why did you leave the East and what attracted you to Sharpham?
A: Having spent three years in India and then having returned to the West to continue my training, I recognised the value of both places for practice. Before I left for Korea I knew that I would only be spending a limited time there. I had also decided that I would not return to the West as a monk. The circumstances that brought us back had to do with the friendship we had developed, which led to our wish to marry; the death of our teacher, Kusan Sunim; and the need to test our practice in the context of our own culture. Having by then trained in two different traditions, I no longer felt at home in either. Sharpham offered both a non-sectarian setting as well as an experimental, non-monastic, non-heirarchic structure that suited our needs very well.
Q: Do you think that Buddhist concepts such as Mahayana, Hinayana, Theravada, Vipassana, Zen, Vajrayana etc. express worn out historical differences or should they be employed for Dharma language and practice in the West?
A: While I deplore the use of these terms as tools for advancing sectarianism, they do have a value as ciphers for important tensions and developments in the Buddhist tradition. Someone said once: "Those who do not learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat their mistakes". Perhaps the task of our generation in the West is to learn the lessons of these historical divisions without repeating the conflict, strife and misunderstanding which they continue to engender. Having said which, I do not think that these terms are at all necessary to explain the meaning of the Dharma in any practical sense.
Q: In your recent book, "The Awakening of the West", you have explored the history of Buddhism in Europe. Don't you think this is rather an ambitious title?
A: Perhaps. In the books I have written, I find that the title always come last as an encapsulation of the key theme of the text. Let's face it, one seeks today in a book title the power of a slogan: a memorable, provocative phrase that challenges people to look at the world in a new way. I would certainly like to encourage the perception that the West is awakening to the Buddha's teaching in an unprecedented manner. The book, I would argue, present a convincing case for the validity of such a perception. It would better be described as 'ambitious' in seeking to stand in the company of two other works, whose titles are merged to form "The Awakening of the West". These are "The Awakening of Faith", a Mahayana shastra attributed to Ashvaghosha, which was one of the first texts to articulate the Dharma in an accessible language to the Chinese, and "The Decline of the West" by Oswald Spengler, published at the end of the First World War as an historical analysis of the breakdown of Western civilisation.
Q: Your writings have led some to regard you as an important voice in the Buddhist world. How do you see your role in terms of bringing the Dharma to the West?
A: In our highly individualised world, it is important to be on one's guard against hubris - the arrogance that one's particular role is of decisive significance. The transition of something as complex and rich as the BuddhaDharma from pre-industrial Asian societies into the modern post-credal world is not going to happen overnight or in a way anyone can possibly predict. Buddhism has never before faced the kind of challenges currently presented to it by the agnostic, secular, scientific, humanist culture that is spreading across the globe. It is thus misleading (despite the title of my book!) to continue speaking of this as a move from East to West.. If I have a role of any kind in this, it is probably as a translator - in the widest sense of the word. While it is certainly important to translate canonical texts, perhaps the more pressing need is to translate the values and sensibility of a Buddhist culture into the idioms of our time. It all comes back to finding a language.
Stephen and Martine Batchelor will be leading a retreat in New Zealand in September this year (see schedule).
STEPHEN BATCHELOR was born in Scotland and educated at Watford Grammar School, England, and in Buddhist monasteries in India, Switzerland and Korea. He has translated and written several books on Buddhism, including A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, Alone with Others, The Faith to Doubt, The Tibet Guide (winner of the 1988 Thomas Cook Award), The Awakening of the West (joint-winner of the 1994 Tricycle Award), Buddhism Without Beliefs and, most recently, Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime. He lectures and conducts meditation retreats worldwide, is a contributing editor to Tricycle: the Buddhist Review, a guiding teacher at Gaia House Retreat Centre, and co-founder of Sharpham College for Buddhist Studies and Contemporary Enquiry. He lives with his wife Martine in France.
MARTINE BATCHELOR spent ten years in a Korean monastery studying Zen Buddhism. She is now a guiding teacher at Gaia House meditation retreat centre and was a founding teacher of the Sharpham College of Buddhist Studies and Contemporary Enquiry, both in Devon. With her husband Stephen, she leads meditation retreats worldwide. She has published many magazine articles on Buddhism and modern living, and her books include The Way of Korean Zen (translated from the Korean), Buddhism and Ecology, Walking on Lotus Flowers and Principles of Zen. Her latest book is 'Meditation for Life'. She lives in Southwest France.
Searching for the Kereru
I have heard the swish of your wings
Carrying your pleasure plump body
I have looked for you but not seen.
Now as I lie and wait for whatever to come to come
There you are, content in the manuka
Steady, still and white.
In Memoriam
Lois Hydes
28 Jul 71 - 23 DEC 2001
…If no other misses you, I will:
I will sense the emptiness where once you breathed,
I shall hear the silence of your voice,
I will not be made of stone
but shall weep by choice…
Stephen Wayne Anderson
Our deepest fear
Is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are
Powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness,
That most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant.
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you NOT to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people
Won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God
that is within us.
It's not just in some of us:
It's in EVERYONE!
As we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson
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ACTING FOR PEACE
Some members of Southern Insight have decided to put our bodies where
our hearts are and get out on the streets of Christchurch to make public
our wish for peace. We are meeting to sit or stand silently beside the
Chalice in Cathedral Square on Saturdays between 12.30 and 1pm.
Among rushing feet,
A few sitting, standing still,
Being peacefully.
From 'The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi'
by Susan Moon
Dear Tofu Roshi:
I am easily distracted by noises while I am sitting meditation. The other
morning, somebody was trying to start a car just outside the meditation
hall window.
Sixty-three times they tried! The few times the engine actually turned
over, it seemed as though the whole hall held it's collective breath,
until the engine would die again. I came out of there a nervous wreck,
and arrived at work grinding my teeth and cracking my knuckles. My boss
said "You seem a little tense. Why don't you take up meditation?"
How can I achieve inner peace?
- Distractible
Dear Distractible:
It has been said that the birdsong outside the meditation hall window
will not disturb us when we understand that we are the bird and the bird
is us. We face, admittedly, a greater challenge in becoming one with the
car that will not start.
Think of your arms and legs and wheel, your eyes as headlamps, your belly as a carburettor. The cushion on which you sit should extend two inches beyond the rim of the rear tyres. Rest the left front hubcap gently on the right front hubcap.
Dear Tofu Roshi:
I am a busy homemaker and single mum of four bouncing boys. For several
years now I have been getting up every morning at five to sit in meditation.
This has changed my life. During my morning meditation, I am able to do
my menu planning, make a mental shopping list, figure out which children
will have their baths that night, whose turn it is to take out the garbage,
and what colour the living-room curtains will be. It's a real great time
to work out positive approaches to family problems. Thanks to meditation,
my family life has improved tremendously. We have planned-for together
time, and my children are clean and well-nourished.
Until recently. But now something is going very wrong. Lately when I
sit down to meditate, my mind goes completely blank. I can't seem to concentrate
on the ingredients of a casserole. I become forgetful of the future and
find myself paying attention only to the most trivial things, like the
tickly feeling I get in my nostrils from the air passing in and out. Sometimes
I even get this weird dizzy feeling, and forget who I am. Nothing seems
to have any particular meaning any more. Am I losing my mind?
- Mum
Dear Mum:
Deep splendour is nothing special, and that is why you have not recognised
it. But many people would give their eye teeth for that tickly feeling
in the nostrils.
SURFING
You could surf the net for a thousand years and still not find the web site that speaks to you.
Surf your inner net for five minutes every night and you will always find a web site that will give you the attention you deserve.
It'll probably look something like this:
www.me.com
from 'The Little Book of Complete Bollocks"
by Alistair Beaton
Weathering
by Fleur Adcock
The wind catches my face
The wind from the snowline catches my face
My face catches the wind from the snowline
and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle
Well that was a metropolitan vanity
Wanting to look young forever to pass,
I was never a pre-raphaelite beauty
And only pretty enough to be seen with men
who wanted to be seen with passable women.
But now that I am in love with a place
that doesn't care how I look or if I am happy
Happy is how I look and that's all
My hair will grow grey in any case
My nails chip and flake, and my waist thicken
And the years work all their usual changes
If my face is to be weather beaten as well
it is little enough lost
For a year amongst lakes and fells
Where to look out of my window
at the high pass
Makes me indifferent to mirrors
and to what my soul may wear
Over its new complexion.
Our practice should be based on the idea of selflessness. Selflessness
is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already
a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try to do anything.
Shunryu Suzuki
All that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on her foot
From an overspilling jar.
Mechthild of Magdeburg
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ON NON-DEPENDENCE OF MIND:
Coming, going, the waterbirds
Don't leave a trace,
Don't follow a path.
Dogen
Flowering flax
by a retreatant at the Olde Vicarage
They all know of your sweet juices
I wonder if you yet do.
The bumble bee high from foxglove
Hovers above your buds
Tongue tantalised by the food you offer
Bellbird busily flies its uneven flight
Perches, searches also knowing of happiness to come
A bee buzzes by
And it too leaves waiting for the day you open
They all know of your sweet juices
I wonder if you yet do.
***
All beings by nature are Buddha
as ice by nature is water;
apart from water there is no ice,
apart from beings no Buddha.
How sad that people ignore the near
and search for truth afar,
like someone in the midst of water
crying out in thirst,
like a child of a wealthy home
wandering among the poor…
From Song of Zazen by Hakuin Ekaku